Blue Note lands on St Martin's Lane, and Mayfair gets Pearl: central London's September openings (5 September 2026)

The Salisbury, an ornate Victorian corner pub on St Martin's Lane in Covent Garden
The Salisbury on St Martin's Lane, Covent Garden. Photo for illustration; it does not show any venue named below. Photo: Salisbury, St Martins Lane, London by Matthew Black (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Eleven central London openings are listed for September, and three of the more interesting sit within a ten minute walk of each other around Covent Garden and Mayfair. Two are restaurants. The third is the first UK club in the Blue Note network.

Blue Note opens its first UK club on St Martin's Lane, 23 September

The New York jazz institution opens its first UK venue on 23 September, in the space beneath the St Martins Lane hotel in Covent Garden. The date is not accidental: it would have been John Coltrane's 100th birthday.

The main room seats 250 and runs on the Blue Note model of two shows a night, at 7pm and 9.30pm, with food served at the tables. A second, 100-capacity room called B-Side follows later in 2026, with a stated focus on emerging British musicians. Robert Glasper plays the opening nights on 23 and 24 September, and Erykah Badu, Jamie Cullum, Nubya Garcia, Yussef Dayes, KOKOROKO and Hak Baker are already confirmed for the first season. Source: Time Out London.

Pearl opens at The Beaumont, Brown Hart Gardens, 15 September

The Beaumont's new all-day restaurant, Pearl, opens on 15 September on Brown Hart Gardens in Mayfair. The listings have it as Mediterranean all-day dining, with lobster linguine and chicken Milanese among the dishes named so far, and Hot Dinners credits the kitchen to Lisa Goodwin-Allen.

It is worth reading alongside the rest of the month's Mayfair activity. Cordelia's, the live-fire steakhouse in the old L'Atelier Robuchon site on Clarges Street, is now listed for 12 September after its original 26 August date slipped, and it is running member previews from the 7th. Sources: The Nudge, updated 1 September 2026 and Hot Dinners.

Cassette brings the Levan team to Maiden Lane, 23 September

The founders of Levan in Peckham open Cassette at 42 Maiden Lane in Covent Garden on 23 September, with Essa Fakhry cooking. The format is a French bistro with low-intervention wine, which is a straight translation of what worked in Peckham into a part of town that has very little of it.

Member previews run on 19 and 21 to 22 September at half price on food, which is the pattern most of this month's openings are following. Source: The Nudge.

Also opening this month

  • Nakimushi, 7 Kensington Mall, Notting Hill, 7 September: Robin Kosuge on ramen downstairs, Yuji Shimokawa Kelly on the robata grill above.
  • The Albatross, 8 to 10 Old Jewry in the City, 7 September, from the Goodman and Wild team.
  • Le Café LPM, Hyde Park Corner, 9 September.
  • Duda Diner, Marylebone, 17 September, from the Malaysian pop-up run by Hakeem and Zura Ahmad.
  • Lunette, on level 11 of 180 The Strand, late September, part of Nick Jones's St Clement hotel, with Florence Knight cooking.

Source: Hot Dinners, new London restaurants opening in September 2026.